Spain’s live music industry keeps growing

Spain saw its fourth consecutive year of growth in the live music industry, with €223.2m generated in 2017.

The revenue the country brought in last year is an increase of 20.6 per cent on 2016, reflecting the pull of Spain as a destination for major international tours. Millions of tickets were sold in 2017 to shows by the likes of the Rolling Stones, U2 and Maluma.

The biggest draw was Spanish singer-songwriter Malendi who sold 208,972 tickets for his Quítate las gafas tour dates.

The biggest international tours of 2017 in Spain were Ricky Martin, who played to 115,806 people at 13 shows, and Guns N’ Roses, who drew 91,200 people to their concerts in Madrid and Barcelona.

In addition, Colombian star Maluma (pictured) performed nine Spanish shows that were seen by 70,914 people. The Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars, U2, Aerosmith and Ed Sheeran were also major events throughout the year in Spain.

The live music sector in the country has been boosted partly due to the reduction of cultural VAT from 21 per cent to 10 per cent. Last year’s figures were above those of 2012 when the VAT was increased.

A recent legal victory against collection society SGAE over tariffs, Google’s new restrictions on secondary ticketing sites and the admission of the Association of Music Promoters (APM) to the European Live Music Association have reportedly played a part in the country’s growth in recent years.

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